HighFleet Reviews

Fantastic game- steep skill arc, replayable, still tough even though I'm 80hrs in. Similar vibe to Dune universe but low-tech instead of space (to me at least). The world is really captivating- You are trapped in a small backwater region without knowing what is happening in the wider realm. Non-stop survival mode. The battles are equal parts satisfying and frustrating- you can wipe out entire fleets with one ship but that same ship will get one shot by a missle.

One of the most inmersive games I ever played, its a really fun and challenging game, very recommended

If i had a rouble for games that included cruise missiles named Granit that haunt my nightmares i'd have 2 roubles which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice. 10/10, buy it, would THERMAL SIGNATURE DETECTED again.

Fantastic game. 10/10 Wish it got a dlc or sequel. Has a fantastic mod to make up for this called flight to Hara Vara.

I really wish I could like this game. The world building is awesome, the systems look cool. But the difficulty curve is just too punishing. Unless you are willing to invest dozens of hours in getting good and testing out meta strategies you will just get rolled over constantly. If you get spotted by a strike group, just restart a new campaign. Miss the silent strike ? Restart. Anything that goes wrong, restart.

This game is incredible. The art direction is so confident, and it makes the game shine. The sound is masterful. Play this game.

WARNING, THERMAL SIGNATURE DETECTED "is it a strike fleet or planes?"..... WARNING, VISUAL CONTACT, "Its a nuclear ballistic missile? Oh there's 7 of them? Oh its too late to dodge? Oh I have no more CWIS or AA missiles? Why is 'Tanc A Lelek' playing? ... uh oh" . . . STRUCTURAL DAMAGE RECEIVED, EVACUATE THE SHIP!

What could be better than firing instant sunshine machines while flying around in floating battleships across a post- AND pre-apocalytic wasteland?!

Amazing style and concepts, but it hurts my hands to play. Shame they stopped supporting it before they finished the gamepad controls, could have made an amazing steamdeck game.

Highfleet is one of those games that's easy to hate and hard to love. I must've dropped this game about 4 times before finally just committing fully and beating it. You're expected to fail initially. In some ways, it's a roguelite where your progress before contributes greatly to your next run allowing you to build a stronger fleet using ships you've created in the workshop. Don't let anyone tell you you can't beat the game using vanilla ships. You absolutely can while making modifications during your campaign. Once I understood the admittedly complex UI, ship customization, and intended strategy, I grew to love the game, but damn is it still hard to love. The strategy and tactics are much simpler than you think. This is not a wargame, 4x, or grand strategy title. It's a wargame-lite with a strong emphasis on guerilla tactics mixed with arcade flight combat. There is absolutely simulation, but this is NOT a sim. There is no logistics, no diplomacy, no city management, fuel is infinite, ammo is infinite, morale is as simple as just keep it above 0 and you can still get into combat. Combat isn't even tactical. It's mostly skill based flight combat where you only control one ship at a time in your fleet attacking around 4 enemies at a time until their fleet is depleted. If that sounds unfair, well it is. It's an arcade game with simulation. You can black out from high-g maneuvers, there's simulated bullet ballistics and penetration, engines overheat, fuel is gradually lost over time, burning fuel or ammo must be extinguished or they'll explode, ammo is loaded in real time by your crew. It's very deep and extremely satisfying. The presentation must be applauded. The art is all beautiful with extremely detailed portraits. The UI is perhaps the most immersive and diagetic I've ever seen. The game oozes atmosphere with its tense soundtrack feeding into the feeling of being outmatched in hostile lands. The pixel art is incredibly detailed with distinct ship designs and the damage model is one of the best I've ever seen. Every piece of a ship can be taken apart and that applies to combat. Antennas, missiles, guns, ammo, generators can all be destroyed with real time tracking on the HUD showing you how damaged these pieces are. This affects gameplay. Destroyed engines makes it hard to maneuver or even stay in the sky. Broken generators make aiming significantly harder. What applies to them applies to you. Battles can get down to the wire with your ship barely hanging on by a thread as your ammo quickly burns with no extinguishers left. The skies are black with burning diesel and escape pods. Your crew panic as they inform you of how little fuel you have left as an alert noise beeps endlessly. Few games can match Highfleet's intensity. Where the game's depth shines is in its granular ship builder. I've spent hours just building a single ship over the course of weeks fine tuning it to be perfect. It's impressive how much you can make with surprisingly not that many pieces. There's not even 10 guns (and half of them kinda suck) and yet the ship designs can be so varied and unique. It's no From the Depths, but it is deep. So why is the game so hard to love? Where to begin? I enjoy the writing quite a bit. There's good lore, but it needed more and it needed better. The dialogue system is atrocious. It's total RNG where you can be presented with options that all make you lose loyalty guaranteed. What kind of shit is that? That's not even getting into the fact that there's no actual dialogue. It's just vague descriptions repeated ad nauseum. A huge missed opportunity for world building. The story ends on an abrupt cliffhanger with no real conclusion. NPC interaction is too far and between to make the attribute system mean anything. I just ignored the World Kindness stat and let it hit the negatives as I committed war crimes. The UI is good, but not as amazing and some people claim mainly because it's just not that intuitive. You can't scroll with the mouse wheel to see all the ships in your fleet. You have to click and drag to scroll. However, you can only turn the IR scanner knob with the mouse wheel. Left click doesn't work. Why? There's no save loadout option when modifying a ship. You have to click off the ship for the game to prompt you to ask if you wanna save. You can't delete any loadouts in game. You can't delete any ship designs in game unless you start a new game. You can't select specific ships you want refueled in a fleet. There's no way to split fleets without leaving town. There's no way to individually assign Shipyard parts like missiles to fleets in case you want them to land and reload somewhere. If you use the ruler to measure distance, which you'll need to do to see how fast or far an enemy ship is from a given destination, it shows you the exact distance until you left click to place it, then the number just disappears from the war map. When you're attacked by a long range missile, you can't select which ship to control to try and shoot the missile down (VERY ANNOYING). Crew being less than 100% affects literally nothing besides maybe morale rate (not sure). The tutorial just sucks and the manual doesn't provide enough detail to explain how the game actually works. People are still confused and argue over mechanics 4 years later. This is an indie game. A slavjank game at that, so it's often very rough around the edges. It used to be much worse with earlier versions having reinforced hull function better as armor than actual armor. I also wasn't a fan of 1.16's change to AI to make them spam missiles in combat constantly turning every battle into a frenzied mess of endless beeping with the screen being pitch black from dodging non-stop. The game is really quite great once you get past the high barrier of entry, but it could be so much more. Take a page from Jagged Alliance and add more 4X elements and role-playing elements. Make cities serve a logistical purpose that can be captured and used for the war effort. Make those same cities re-capturable by the enemy with the ability to train militia to protect them from enemies. As is, it's fun and intense, but with not enough of a dynamic campaign, strategic/tactical depth, or compelling complete narrative to make it endlessly replayable. In short, it's repetitive, but it is one of a kind. (8/10)